Come with me. Never leave me.
He wanted to say it out loud so bad, but Christ, she’d think he was crazy, asking her to uproot her life and live in hotel rooms. Didn’t she say she hated being confined inside four walls? Johnny’s stomach dropped a little and he tried to hide his dread by glancing over his shoulder into the room, spotting his guitar case near the foot of his bed. “You want me to play you a song?”
Hope picked up his right hand and ran a thumb over the sore calluses decorating the bases of his fingers. “You’ve played enough tonight,” she murmured. “You don’t have to entertain me.”
Comfort rocked him down to the soles of his feet. Belonging. He couldn’t stop himself from burying his face in Hope’s neck, his hands fisting in the material of her dress, drawing her closer. And closer. Up onto her toes. Until she’d said those words—you don’t have to entertain me—Johnny didn’t realize that’s all he’d felt good for…for a long damn time. Performing. Moving the cogs of the machine so everyone could get paid. Making the record company happy so they’d keep Citizen signed to the label. Maybe there was more of him left over after all that grinding. If so, this girl seemed to see it.
“Why did you start playing music, Johnny?”
She was still selflessly trying to cure him of his writer’s block when all he could think about was drowning in her and forgetting the world existed. But he couldn’t help wanting to reward her determination to fix what was broken inside his head. Johnny exhaled, watching the moonbeam hair shift on her temple. “You might already know this, since it’s asked about in every single interview, but my mother passed away when I was young.” He cleared his throat and she squeezed him tight. “What I’ve never told anyone, though, is that she left me her guitar. And I thought I could bring some part of her back if I learned to play. That’s why I started. I continued because I love when the right notes or lyrics come together and it shifts something inside of you. It’s like…”
“Magic.”
He took hold of her hand and spun her in a slow circle, falling those final few feet into love when she blushed to the roots of her hair. “Yeah. Magic.” Fuck. Looking at her made it hurt to swallow. And a few minutes ago, the last thing he wanted was to hold a guitar, but his fingers were starting to itch in that undeniable way. He’d almost forgotten how it felt and suddenly he needed to make music to match Hope’s beauty. Needed to find a way to immortalize it. “Keep dancing. Please?”
Momentarily tearing his eyes off her, Johnny returned to the inside of the hotel room long enough to retrieve his guitar before joining Hope again on the balcony. Her eyes ticked from the guitar to his face and she smiled softly, slowly raising her arms up over her head, swaying her hips side to side. For long moments, there was nothing but the sound of the wind and his rasping breath for her to dance to, but then…
His mind quite simply flooded with songs, like a dam had broken. Enough words to fill two notebooks and spill over into a third. Songs about open spaces and tasting the far side of heaven on his tongue and his knees digging into the fucking soil.
Johnny’s fingers twitched against the strings and an original series of chords released into the night air, sounding like a haunting love song. They seemed to make Hope’s neck lose power, her hair cascading down her back like a snowy waterfall. Gorgeous. So gorgeous he almost knelt at the vision she created.
“Angel make a beggar kneel…” he murmured, under his breath, his fingers playing another cluster of notes. “Just for the chance to feel. Barefoot balcony dancer, soak her in. Shining with innocence. Tempting sin…”
Hope’s laughter was joyful as their gazes met, a light sheen in her eyes. “Wow.”
“Likewise.” Johnny played the same series of chords as before, but made a slight tweak and felt that click, deep in his gut. There it was. “Hope,” he said hoarsely. “Please don’t stop.”
“I won’t.”
She danced like a fairy on the balls of her feet, the stars silhouetting her, and Johnny continued to play, memorizing the notes, somehow knowing he’d never forget them. Never be able to forget anything that involved her. But his fingers stumbled over the strings when Hope caught the hem of her dress in both hands and lifted the garment up over her head, letting it dangle from her fingertips.
Her mostly naked body was such a fucking work of art, it took Johnny a few beats to notice she was blushing even more furiously than before. “I don’t know. It just felt right,” she said, letting go of the dress and leaving her nothing-but-panties-clad body on display. “Us. It…feels right now.”